The CDAO’s Perspective: Data Governance

As more CDAOs share their perspectives with us through our annual Leadership Perspective Survey, we are examining each of their top three functional and investment priorities for 2022. Recently, we wrote about the 10 trends we observed in the survey from data and analytics leaders across our CDAO communities. 

Their top priority across the enterprise remains driving growth, followed by accelerating digital business and improving customer experience. 

In the area of business function, data governance is the clear, number one priority for CDAOs for the second year in a row. Data governance is also the most selected area of investment, with 62% of CDAOs indicating that they will invest in governance products or services this year. 

During this series of blogs, we will share perspectives from data and analytics leaders in Evanta communities on each of their top three priorities for 2022. What are we hearing from CDAOs on data governance? 

One CDAO shared, “With differing levels of data maturity comes different approaches to data governance and driving a data culture within an organization. Data language and literacy levels land differently… how do you account for this and adjust governance structures accordingly?”

Another data leader observed that in a division of their organization, “We're very mature and have advanced capabilities, validations and reporting.” This CDAO also said that they had work to do to advance the governance practices to other divisions, noting, “Governance and MDM are foundational platforms and table stakes that really ignite and accelerate other digital initiatives. You have to get them right.”

These are CDAOs’ top goals for data governance: 

Another data and analytics leader shared, “How to execute a robust data governance framework is vital… It needs to be the right platform and accessible across the organization.” The same CDAO noted that you first have to understand the quality of data in your organization and how data can be leveraged.

Here are CDAOs’ top challenges with data governance:

Are CDAOs searching for technology and services to help in their journey to better data governance? Data and analytics leaders in several communities indicated it was their first- or second-ranked area of investment in 2022.

Across all Evanta CDAO communities, 82% of CDAOs who plan to invest in data governance plan to do so in the next 12 months. And 57% of these data leaders also said their budget for technology and services increased this year. 

Here is a closer look at how data leaders are ranking their investments in data governance and the timelines for investing their resources.

The topic of data governance will be featured prominently on the agenda at these CDAO Executive Summits this spring: 

New York CDAO Executive Summit on May 25th.

Boston CDAO Executive Summit on June 8th.

Dallas CDAO Executive Summit on June 14th.

If you’re looking for an opportunity to discuss this topic with your C-level peers in data and analytics, you can view all upcoming summits across Evanta CDAO communities here.